Emma Black

Emma has worked across the northern beef industry for the past thirteen years. After growing up on a property in western Queensland she went on to study a Bachelor of Livestock Science. Emma then based herself in north Queensland working directly with producers in livestock nutrition. With a strong desire to learn she went on to undertake an abattoir management graduate program to gain knowledge right along the beef supply chain. Emma then worked in Beef Extension with the Queensland Department of Agriculture and Fisheries Northern Beef team for nine years, based in North West Qld, taking a whole-of-business approach to assist producers both on and off-farm in livestock nutrition, pasture/livestock management, meat quality, research and adoption projects and general property management. She is passionate about bringing together the on-ground knowledge, science and data to upskill producers to allow them to make the best management decisions for their business. Seeing a gap within this area of the industry led her to recently co-found Black Box Co Software with Shannon Speight (2019 Zanda McDonald Award winner). As Chief Operations Officer, Emma is working directly with industry to build a software platform that ingests the production data generated on-farm, link it with individual animal data from right along the supply chain and turn it into easy-to-understand visual insights to allow producers to make more informed management decisions.
As winner of the prestigious Zanda McDonald Award in 2015 Emma undertook a tailored mentoring program with some of the most successful agricultural businesses across Australia and New Zealand focussing on business management and data collection. She is an active member of the Platinum Primary Producer Group, the Zanda McDonald Award Committee and the Next Generation Committee for Beef Australia. In addition, she was coach of the Australian National Meat Judging team for four years, taking them to the USA to compete at International Livestock Shows, learn about their agriculture industries and meat grading systems. She has further studied a Graduate Certificate in Rural Science - Agriculture Consulting (UNE) a Graduate Certificate in Agribusiness (MOC) and currently studying a Masters in Business Administration (Global) through James Cook University.
(updated July 2021)